A review about the concert bashes it saying:

Peter Gabriel has finally run out of new ideas.

I disagree completely. Anyone attending the concert expecting to see “classic” Gabriel in progressive rock mode was likely disappointed. But anyone going with an open mind, ready to listen true reinterpretations of classic Gabriel songs alongside covers from his Scratch My Back album, was in for a treat!

One of the first songs, “Wallflower” was beyond gorgeous! Here’s the video I managed to capture of this moment with my phone:

Other highlights of the evening for me were “San Jacinto” and “Rhythm of the Heat” along with “Darkness”, “Digging In the Dirt” and “Red Rain” which I leave you with:

Topping the performances were Peter’s voice, which continues to be rock solid along, his storytelling preceding each song and his incredible character that never takes his audience or the musicians that accompany him for granted.

Thanks for an amazing evening, Peter!

Visit the Prezi web site for more details.

As a patient advocate and a web user, I am always curious when I learn about these kinds of things… like the “reporter” from the “news web site”, I was curious to learn more about this new diet… Notice my use of quotes.

Why do I imply with my quotes that this is not a reporter writing about a new diet, or that this is not a news web site:

• The page you land on when you click on the ad has the URL http://newshealth6.com/LoseWeightFast. If you visit it and you try clicking on any of the U.S., World, Business, Politics, etc. sections of the news site and guess where it leads? BACK to the same page. This is a 1-page web site that only seeks to promote this so-called African Mango diet!
• If you try to leave the web site, you are presented with a very classy “Are you sure you don’t want to take advantage of the African Mango and LeanSpa Cleanse Free Trial?” popup (see below). When was the last time you saw a news site doing this? Let me think…. ah…. right! NEVER!

• Best of all, if you dare to post a comment in reply to this scam, you are (not surprisingly) taken to a broken page… I rest my case…

It’s not a real news site and they are not really doing what they say:

As part of a new series: “Diet Trends: A look at America’s Top Diets” we examine consumer tips for dieting during a recession

These guys are “content phishing”. I am not sure if it’s even a term that exists, but it’s the name I give to these kinds of practices, similar to the ones by people trying to make you believe you are visiting your bank web site, to steal your banking data (and money) from you. These kinds of practices are unethical and should not be allowed!

When you read about something that seems too good to be true, maybe it is! Please take a few moments to navigate around the site you get to. You may discover a lot, simply by clicking around as I did…

What’s sad is that, when I see practices like this one, I don’t even care any more if what they somehow got on Reuters Health about African Mango two years ago is true or not. Anyone willing to go to this extreme to promote their product is not going to get my money… and I hope they don’t get yours and they get sanctioned for deceiving people this way!

1. It’s NOT web-based. So ironic that a product called iWeb doesn’t offer a way to manage your web site on the web. ALL you can do with it is dependent on the client that is installed in the Me.com account associated with your web site. This means if you happen to have two accounts set up on the computer where you run iWeb from (the case of my wife, who is in charge of our web site changes), better get ready for a lot of closing applications, logging out and logging back in just to make a simple change… PLUS, who’d imagine they wouldn’t make it available via a web interface!
2. It doesn’t separate content from presentation. This is another way of saying, if you want to change the way your links appear on all pages, from blue to orange, you have to do it on EVERY page. There’s no central place where this change can be made (it’s called CSS!) so this makes for a very painful process redesigning sites build on iWeb.
3. It doesn’t like Google Analytics too much. First, because there’s no single place where you can paste the Analytics Tracking Code, so you LITERALLY have to paste it on EVERY single page you want to track. Second, if you take a look at your Google Analytics traffic data, because of the way the pages are served, you have to really make an exercise in URL analysis to figure out what page’s data you’re looking at.
4. Horrible URLs. I can’t say the pages built with iWeb are not Search Engine Friendly. They do OK, but the URLs rendered by iWeb could use some love. Example: when you type www.diabeteshandsfoundation.org and get to our home page, the URL becomes… ta-ta!!

http://diabeteshandsfoundation.org/Diabetes_Hands_Foundation/Diabetes_Hands_Foundation.html

So next time you are tempted to get iWeb, avoid the temptation and look for another option. As for us, by mid-year we plan on migrating our site to WordPress, which reminds me:

Can anyone recommend a good WordPress developer that is willing to give a small nonprofit a good price for a migration project like this one? If so, please drop me a line at manny AT diabeteshf DOT org.

Those who know me know that I am not a big fan of suspense thrillers. I mean… I LOVED Sixth Sense (in spite of the fact that my friend Gilberto spoiled it for me by telling the end ) and I’ve highly enjoyed movies like The Shining. But you won’t see this kind of movie too often on my Netflix queue.

Then Chris Sparling, the husband of Kerri Sparling, wrote Buried. Being the sissy that I am with “this kind of movie” I had avoided going to see it in the theater. But when it became available on Netflix, I put it at the top of my queue.

We watched it last night and we were BLOWN AWAY! To begin with, the script is simply brilliant! Chris touched on multiple social aspects that are highly relevant to our time: the war and its impact on the lives of people in the US and overseas; corporate mis-behavior, trying to avoid embarrassment due to stories leaking in the media, to name just a couple. The script is the top thing that rocks about the movie (and I don’t say this because I know Chris).

Ryan Reynolds is the second thing that made the movie what it was. I can’t say I was a big fan of his previous movies (I was indifferent to most of them) but I was really impressed with his role in this movie. He is practically the only person on screen the entire movie and all scenes take place inside a coffin. When you see the special features, you realize how physically and emotionally demanding the shooting was on Reynolds!

Last, the photography and overall directing of the movie was incredible too. The constraints imposed by the “set” make it a true triumph to come up with the beautiful lighting that consistently prevails throughout the multiple shots. Then, the shots from multiple angles that help with the storytelling, made possible by having seven different coffins that were used for different types of shots… in short, for such a constraining medium to bring Chris’ story to life, director Rodrigo Cortes did an incredible job!

According to IMDB, the next screenplay by Chris (titled ATM) is scheduled to be released later in 2011. I am looking forward to seeing it!

• Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – The Social Network OST was haunting me for weeks… it still does. Ironic I haven’t seen the movie yet!
• Other Machines: my friend Mike Olsen from Full Sail put out a new album of music this year. Impeccable stuff, just like his earlier album while I was still in Florida.
• Jónsi: his new album is a great continuation of his work with Sigur Ros and Riceboy Sleeps. Some moments in here that I keep going back to over and over again.
• Hans Zimmer: the Inception OST was another regular play in 2010. I am addicted to the music as much as I am addicted to the movie.
• Hammock: their new album and their December EP are brilliant. Check out their new collaboration with Matthew Ryan, released on New Year’s Day, 2011.
• The Candlepark Stars: these guys are my favorite discovery this year. They are right in the middle, between Explosions in the Sky and Hammock… LOVE THEM!

A few more albums I liked (nearly all from Canada):

• The Arcade Fire: The Suburbs
• Broken Bells: self-titled
• Stars: The Five Ghosts & The Seance
• The New Pornographers: Together
• Caribou: Swim
• Robin Guthrie: Sunflower Stories

Some tracks I enjoyed:

• Peter Gabriel: “Flume”
• Underworld: “Always Loved a Film”
• Belle and Sebastian: “I Didn’t See It Coming”
• Silvio Rodriguez: “Trovador Antiguo”
• Gorillaz: “Stylo (feat. Mos Def & Bobby Womack)”

Inception is one of those movies that leaves you thinking. But that is a description that falls in many ways…

When we went to see inception, two of the other three people that joined us were seeing it for the second time. Reading forum topics about Inception, this is not a uncommon situation (people watching it 2-3-4 times to try to make sense of it…)

Truth is Christopher Nolan got us all talking. Even film music fans (I count myself among them) are talking about how the score plays subliminally with slowed-down versions of Edith Piaf songs!

The movie’s “true” meaning (something that Nolan may never give up… even something he may not even know himself) may never reveal itself to us. But that doesn’t matter too much, I think.

What stuck with me was the power of inception… beyond it, think what we as parents can do to our children by making them believe something as they are children: that they can realize their true potential, that they can make reach their goals… we are in a way planting those same seeds of an idea that were mentioned in the movie.

What did you think about Inception?

To Infinity and Beyond!

The theater in downtown Berkeley was half empty. Judging from this and the trailers we’d seen, we looked at each other slightly concerned.

Our concern went away very quickly. Starting with the usual Pixar short, titled Day & Night we were blown away. The short is hard to describe because of its simplicity: it consists of two characters (“Day” and “Night”) that walk through the screen and see in their “transparent” bodies the world they are living in projected (I hope this description makes SOME sense).

The brilliant and thought-provoking short led to a classic Toy Story-style opening, that quickly got us hooked. The glasses sure help the delivery but the movie hardly seems to force any “3-D kung-fu” moves that have become such a staple lately.

But in the midst of the ever-improving animation, the story (written by Little Miss Sunshine‘s Michael Arndt) continued to show why Pixar is one of the best studios out there. A whole slew of new characters get introduced in this movie and the bulk of it takes place in a new environment: a daycare where the main characters get played with (read abused) by a bunch of crazy toddlers.

I won’t give out much about the movie here. There is lots of laughs: the now-famous Spanish-talking Buzz Lightyear, resulting from a reboot of the figure in the movie, is hilarious! There is also lots of special moments that may make you shed a tear… I know someone who did.

I know the string of perfect reviews for Pixar movies has been broken. But I don’t care. The story and the delivery of the closing movie for the Toy Story series was amazing: it’s, simply put, the best movie they’ve put out since Finding Nemo.

Since 2004, I have been writing about them. But in 2010′s Chasing After Shadows…Living With the Ghosts, the eerie cover showing floating bodies in water is carefully balanced with one of the most positively stimulating albums they have ever done. Very few vocal arrangements make their way into the sea of processed guitar sounds that lie at the heart of the Hammock sound. Their Sigur Ros influences can be felt here and there but their work is unmistakable and unique.

It’s hard (nearly impossible) to pick a favorite track: not only because the entire album is unbelievably great. But also because it has a unity to it, like the hand that moves the hair aside to let the light fall on the eyes that go with the smile… it’s simple but perfect, complex yet soothing, calming and elevating at the same time.

The best way for you to experience Hammock is to listen to it. Watch the video for the track “Breathturn” to get a feel for how these guys sound…

Hammock – Breathturn from David Altobelli on Vimeo.